For all her modern outlook and education, Benazir Bhutto was a great believer in destiny, and her destiny, as she saw it, was to be the unchallenged leader of the Pakistan People's party.
That conviction, which led her to anoint herself the party's lifetime leader, now leaves the PPP scrambling to regroup. It may also mean that Bhutto's party could die with her. "She would talk about democracy but what she meant is the connection with the people that her father passed on to her," said Thomas Simons, US ambassador to Islamabad during Bhutto's first prime ministership in the early 90s. "Institutions were not very important. The PPP was really the engine for her personal mission."
Though the PPP has cadres and organisations in all Pakistan's provinces, Bhutto - and a personal clique - maintained a firm hand on decision-making. That prevented the emergence of a secondary tier of leadership. It also alienated liberal and progressive Pakistanis who should have been the PPP's natural supporters.
"They were all dwarfed by Bhutto. They were all middle-ranking people who never really developed into frontline leaders," said Azmat Hassan, a former Pakistani diplomat who was an adviser to Bhutto.
However, the last eight years of exile forced Bhutto to cede some control to Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who headed the party in the national assembly. Mr Fahim was mentioned repeatedly yesterday as a possible interim leader. Another name in circulation is Aitzaz Ahsan (62), a charismatic lawyer and human rights activist from Lahore who served in Bhutto's first cabinet as interior minister but later broke with her.